choreography performance visual art

English Version

German Version

Kriegstagebuch

Christmas Eve 1942.Fourth Christmas during the war
In this diary I want to report to you, my dearest son Hinrich, the joy and suffering during this intensive struggle of nations.
You now are with your grandfather, on the farm in Brunshausen, after the heroic death of my only brother Klaus Friedrich in Sewastopol.
Again we missed your father since he could not be with us “under” the christmas tree. You were shooting the rifle, it was cute.

10th of january 1943Our soldiers are now in Russia, in Stalingrad. Uncle Hans Herbert has been honored with the premier Iron Cross.

4th of march 1943Yesterday’s fear is still stuck in my bones
This time you saw for yourself how the English bombed our beautiful Altes Land for 90 minutes. I was alone with four kids in the washing cellar for several terrifying hours. There were fires everywhere.

15th november 1943The war is turning into a spooky state. They are retreating in the east, Italy is breaking down, there continue to be terror-attacks on Germans farms, on defenseless women and children.
My belief in the Führer still is unshaken, even though I cannot explain it myself. A nation that has fought and suffered so much must survive!

Family Matters

In this two hander theatre-maker Jochen Stechmann – joined live by his mother, Margrit – takes a personal and intimate look at the way our family histories shape our present experiences.

Family Matters begins with a song that
welcomes you into the home of the Stechmann family,
while we slowly zoom in on the parental bedroom
where Jochen was conceived. On stage his mother performs the triple role of assistant,
witness and soothing presence.

Through a wealth of documentary material including his
grandmother’s diary, taped interviews with her and autobiographical anecdotes, we learn of
Jochen’s childhood at the family fruit farm and the dubious political affiliations of his
grandparents.
The piece develops into a reflection on the old and the new, an inter-generational
dialogue with ghosts of the past. One of them is Rosa Luxemburg, whose picture occupies a
central place on stage, like a shrine. In 1919, during the left-wing Spartacus Revolt, she was
beaten and shot in the head by right-wing militiamen. Jochen’s grandfather was directly
involved.
Another ghost – printed on Jochen’s T-shirt – is Ulrike Meinhof. In the early
nineteen-seventies she was engaged in a double rebellion that was as much personal –
against her foster parents’ Nazi past – as it was a political revolt against the hypocrisy of a
society that had superficially whitewashed itself, leaving the Nazis’ industrial and economic
power structures untouched. These two women represent the other, revolutionary face of
Germany, one that despises the passive middle-class submission to the militarism and
nationalism summarized in the German term ‘Spiesbürgertum’.

Without the slightest hint of sarcasm, Jochen sums it up at the end of the piece,
with these words to his grandfather: I am sorry that the only way you are still present in this
world is as material for my theatre. And I left the theatre thinking that some ghosts had been
laid to rest.

Boris Gerrets - DasArts Laudatio 2010

This semi-autobiographical performance reflects upon a set of symbolic objects representing both collective and personal history. An honest attempt to negotiate a position between confrontation of the past and a final reconciliation with it

How can we deal with our emotional heritage? How does it affect our daily life? What does it mean to be German nowadays? Can we ever outlive the sins of our ancestors?

Stechmann is stepping into the shoes of his grandparents and tells his story straightforward by using items that are loaded with meaning